The game in which I sink to new lows of photography.

It began with a field that looked like this:

This is what happens when you have no rain all summer and then a bunch the day of the game. But no biggie, we can handle a little mud.

Then the refs showed up. And Ben (the church deacon) got there. It wouldn't be long before there was a very loud meeting of the minds.

When it became clear that the officials were only going to call pushing on our guys, Ben shared his opinion (in the spirit of Christian love, of course) that perhaps the guy in yellow wanted to call that foul both ways. The ref immediately walked over to our coach and told him his fan had to go. As in, leave the game. Go home. Our coach asked to be carded and said he'd make the guy shut up (Coach and Ben are kindred spirits and have equally big mouths.), but no, the ref said he had to go. So Ben left. And our guys got mad. Donnie took it upon himself to score three goals in the next 5 minutes, then Ashton scored, then Donnie scored two more. It was beautiful. The ref gave them a penalty kick about 12 yards in front of our goal when their guy ran into our guy's leg and fell down writhing in pain. They scored on a corner kick. During the second half, Ref just about hyperventilated blowing his whistle on pushing calls (always on our guys) every fifteen seconds (I'm not even kidding). Ref tried valiantly to give the game to the other team, but we held firm. What a great game!

I always try to take a few pictures before the action starts, because once the whistle blows, I have to keep up the family tradition of ref abuse. Today I wanted to get some action shots of Man-boy and his fellow strikers taking shots on goal during warm-up.  Here's one of Man-boy kicking:

Yeah, I missed that one. Try again:

Dang. Missed again. Okay, this time I'll get it:

Good thing they play better than I take pictures.

Be thankful ~

Karen